Harry's latest move is said to have “torpedoed” any chance of reconciliation with his dad. Photo / Getty Images
OPINION:
Poor King Charles. He has had a very bad week, and it has nothing to do with Queen Camilla limiting his iPad time so he will practice his coronation oath or because they are only showing Bargain Hunt repeats.
Rather, a lot has been going on, and all of it pretty crap news for the world’s newest monarch.
First, millions of French decided to channel their sans-culottes forebears to stage massive protests across Paris, including starting fires all over the place, thus forcing the government to can Charles’ state visit there. Instead of him and Camilla being feted at Versailles with a huge banquet in their honour, they were instead forced to stay home at Clarence House, reheating leftover grouse from the freezer.
Then there was the news that permanent headache and Mr Toad’s spiritual heir, Prince Andrew, is reportedly considering penning a tell-all because he has too much time on his hands and a dusty, forlorn bank account he wants to fill.
However, perhaps the most stressful thing on Charles’s plate, besides all that tepid grouse, is his son Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, who this week decided to stage a clanging return to the UK.
Early on Monday, Harry arrived back in London for the first day of the court case that he and six other people are bringing against the Daily Mail’s parent company over alleged phone hacking (they deny the claims).
No one had expected the Duke of Sussex to make the 8500-kilometre trip for what is only a preliminary hearing and to simply watch proceedings, since he is not giving evidence and could easily have watched the whole thing at home via a private stream.
But no, there Harry was Making A Point, fronting up to the High Court in a sombre suit and looking pleased as punch to have a chance to put the boot into Fleet Street (on his tax returns, he should just list Point-Making and Score-Settling as his primary occupations).
Where things really took a turn for the worst for Charles, though, was not just finding out his son had decided to pitch up on home turf, but that his son demonstrated his continuing refusal to not waste an opportunity to lash out at the royal family (and right on the very day His Majesty was due to be wowing the nation of Gauloises-lovers and plying Brigit Macron with his best charming patter).
In a witness statement entered into the court record, the Duke charged that “the Institution was without a doubt withholding information from me for a long time” about the phone hacking.
Elsewhere, he said he had been “conditioned to accept … the policy was to ‘never complain, never explain’.”
I know, I know. We have been here before so many times – Harry taking another stroppy swipe at Buckingham Palace (what next in the predictability stakes here? Meghan totes a $12,000 Bottega Veneta to meet the homeless? Oprah turns up on their doorstep with a film crew? Somehow they get miraculously papped feeding the poor?).
What is different this time is the reaction from Charles.
Nearly immediately after news of Harry’s return to London broke on Twitter, it was reported by the Telegraph that His Majesty was “too busy” to see his son, a line that was quite hard to swallow given that last-minute cancellation by the French.
Now, a friend of the 74-year-old has revealed that Aitch’s decision to drag his family into his legal fight (only one of a series of courtroom battles he is currently waging) was - what sounds a lot like - the last straw for His Majesty.
The chum, speaking to the Daily Beast’s Tom Sykes, said: “Harry has torpedoed any remaining bridges with this statement. It is just six weeks until the coronation and the last thing Charles needs.”
Of the King’s seeming unwillingness to find even a weeny sliver of a window to see his son, the friend told Sykes: “The trust is gone, and I think that’s been made quite clear by the King refusing to meet him.”
It is not only Charles who seems to be wholly uninterested in spending any time with Spotify’s least productive hire.
His elder brother Prince William, fresh off of a highly successful trip to Poland in support of the war effort in Ukraine, was reportedly “out of town” for the school holidays, which would seem to be a polite euphemism for ‘over one’s dead body’.
(Where is “out of town”, you ask? Well, he, wife Kate, the Princess of Wales and their three kids could be off having some bucolic fun times in matching Hunter wellies at their country estate in Norfolk. Then there’s skiing in France, which they are partial to, or there’s that tiny island off Cornwall his dad owns or maybe they are getting some sun in the South of France, where they went last year for her brother’s wedding … Princes have problems too, you know.)
But back to William, who is, according to that friend of Charles, “over it”.
The reason?
“If this was about his vendetta with the Mail, that would be one thing. But Harry keeps doing everything in his power to try to embarrass the family. How can you have a relationship with someone who is doing that?”
And that might be the most important point in all of this – Harry did not have to bring the Palace or his relatives into this court action, not in the least.
The case can be made, if you’re feeling a tad generous, that he sorta, kinda, maybe had to take a few shots at the royal family in his and Meghan’s Netflix series and his memoir Spare to keep their paymasters happy.
Let’s be honest here. These massive entertainment companies have shareholders to report to and boards to keep sweet. They only shelled out millions to the royals-without-portfolios so they could get the goss, the dirt, the tea, whatever you want to call it. They wanted juicy morsels that would encourage audiences to click, subscribe and buy.
But this court case is an entirely different kettle of line-caught fish. Harry could have pursued his action against the publisher without pillorying the Palace for the approximately 87th time.
Who would have thought that after more than two years of loudly enumerating his family’s various sins to the entire world; after an estimated 40 hours of media outings and an entire book, Harry would still be plumbing the depths of his anger and bitterness towards his family.
(He would have to be the human equivalent of the Mariana Trench when it comes to his unresolved resentment and hurt.)
Yes, the royal family might have failed him, especially as a grief-stricken child, but for yonks now he has been failing them too.
Failing to, ironically, protect their privacy, the very thing he is in court railing against, by revealing intimate conversations and even text messages in Spare (this week in his statement, he also named a former girlfriend. Wonder if he had asked her permission before he exposed her information to the world?).
And failing to be there during hard times.
In February and March 2021, 99-year-old Prince Philip was in hospital, and it seemed apparent that this time around, he wouldn’t be staging his usual Lazarus-like return to vim, vigour and casual racism. While there were still Covid restrictions in play, did Harry fly home to see his clearly-on-the-way-out grandfather? No. Instead he and Meghan went ahead with their brutal Oprah Winfrey interview.
The following year, did Harry decide he should pop over for some quality time with his Granny, who, according to biographer Gyles Brandreth, was fighting bone cancer?
Nope.
All the Sussexes did was squeeze in a whistle-stop, 24-hour visit on their way to The Hague for the Invictus Games, only to then sit down for a TV interview and to talk about said private visit.
So, will Charles be “too busy” to see his son and daughter-in-law if they return to London in a mere six weeks for his coronation? Will William still have his out-of-office on for his brother’s emails, even when he is sitting a good pew or seven ahead of Harry in Westminster Abbey? And just how many American breakfast interviews might Harry and Meghan be able to fit in?
The only certainty in all of this is that it’s going to be must-watch telly - and hey, you won’t even need to fork out for a Netflix subscription to tune in.
New York Times: Men are leaving fiction reading behind. Some people want to change that.